All three counties showed a small increase in seasonally adjusted unemployment rates. Deschutes County went from 8.5 percent in February to 8.6 percent in March. “The pace of job growth in Deschutes County was slower than the statewide growth for the first time in well over a year,” wrote Regional Economist Damon Runberg in a monthly report released Monday.

The change in Central Oregon unemployment rates — one-tenth of 1 percent — does not represent a statistically significant change, Runberg said. The seasonally adjusted loss of 200 or 300 jobs, for example, constitutes only a small fraction of more than 63,000 people employed in Deschutes County.